


Interspecies Communication

by OneOfThoseThings



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Can be read as platonic but I personally ship TF out of these two, Coitus Interruptus, Crack, Gen, Interspecies Awkwardness, Masturbation Interruptus, Rating Rounded Up (for Safety), Sexual Humor, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22778836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneOfThoseThings/pseuds/OneOfThoseThings
Summary: Donna starts showing some unusual symptoms and the Doctor tries to figure out what's wrong with her. It does not go over well.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Donna Noble
Comments: 10
Kudos: 92





	Interspecies Communication

**Author's Note:**

> Interspecies Communication (ala Wikipedia): Communication between different species of animals, plants, or microorganisms.

By all accounts, Donna had been thoroughly enjoying the visit to the sky island, right up until she inexplicably became impossible to deal with. She sulked all the way back to the TARDIS, all but frothing at the mouth. 

“Are you all right?” the Doctor asked for the twelfth time.

“Take a wild flipping guess,” Donna snapped. He added her tone to the mental tally of unexplained and potentially dangerous symptoms. She still had violet smears of dye streaked across random patches of skin. He suspected her dance partner had smears of paler skin to match. 

He sniffed the air, tasting for abnormalities. Tangy human pheromones were tangled in everything. 

“Donna,” he tried to modulate his voice to a register that would be soothing to mammals, “You seem to be experiencing an unexplained spike in pheromones. It could be affecting your judgment.”

Donna muttered something that sounded like “ _Unexplained my arse_ ,” but that was equally nonsensical and only added to his theory. 

“Just let me run a quick scan in the medbay,” he said, tugging her hand. 

“I’m not sick!” she snapped. “I was just―“ she waved her free hand in a frenzied looping motion. “I thought you’d travelled with humans before!”

He frowned at the non-sequitur, herding her into the medbay. “Course I have. You know I have. Are you experiencing memory loss?” He mentally added that to the increasingly strange list of symptoms. 

“No, I’m definitely remembering everything in flipping crystal clear HD!” she snapped

“You’re louder than usual,” he observed, a little impressed in spite of himself. “Are you having trouble hearing? Is that a symptom? Your heart rate and temperature are elevated. You didn’t eat any of that yellow moss did you? I warned you about that moss. I’m nearly certain I said not to eat it―“

“Doctor!” Donna reached an impressive decibel level. He was surprised nothing shattered. 

“What?” he asked, now vaguely distracted by the threat of tinnitus. 

After all that, Donna seemed to be having trouble deciding on what to shout next. He supposed that must be a problem when one shouted as much as she did. “I shouldn’t have to explain this to you! You’re supposed to be over 900 years old!”

He frowned at her, starting the scanner. “What does my age have to do with your illness?” 

Donna made a sound that was honestly hard to categorize. “I’m not ill,” she said, gritting her teeth, “I’m turned on.”

The Doctor looked her up and down. “Why?”

“What do you mean ‘ _why_?’” she growled. “Do you not remember what I was doing before you barged in, blathering on about core temperatures and respiratory distress?!” 

“Course I remember,” he said. “You were speaking to that man with the pronounced mandible and HERC2 gene.” 

Donna squinted at him. “You― Did that look like a conversation to you?” 

He tried to recall. She’d been a bit closer than usual, but Donna did seem to get cold around larger human males, always shivering and getting in their space. It seemed like a reasonable method for sharing body heat, something that humans seemed to need help with sometimes. 

“Was that not a typical social interaction for humans?” 

Donna squinted at him like she’d never actually looked at his face before and was entirely unprepared for what it looked like. “Are you serious?” 

The Doctor re-ran the conversation in his head, trying to figure out what he would or wouldn’t be serious about. He tilted his head until his neck started to hurt, but that didn’t seem to help either. “…Yes…?” he tried. “...Sorry, what about?” 

The scanner beeped, and he glanced at it. “Now, that’s odd…”

“Says I’m fine, doesn’t it?” Donna asked. Without waiting for an answer, she headed for the hall. “I’m going to my room. Don’t follow me!”

“But Donna!” He hurried after her. “The scan picked up an inorganic substance in your bloodstream. It doesn’t seem poisonous, _per se_ , but it’s not safe for you to be on your own! What if the symptoms increase in severity?” 

She spun on him. “Listen to me, you crazy Martian. I know exactly what these symptoms are and I am perfectly capable of working through them without supervision. Now shove off unless you want a very detailed lesson in human anatomy!” She swept into her room, slamming the door and engaging the lock with a resounding clatter. 

He stared at it in confusion for exactly 16 seconds before following her inside. “You seem to be experiencing gaps in your memory,” he said, raising his voice over her indignant squawk. “You know my knowledge of human anatomy is already encyclopedic… Why are you taking your clothes off?”

“Ask your encyclopedic knowledge of human anatomy!” Donna snapped, throwing her shirt in his face. 

The buttons caught in his hair, and by the time he worked his way free she was once again back in her bed. “Is this really a good time for a nap?” 

Donna burrowed into the blankets, head and all. “Go away!” she yelled, in spite of the muffling layers. 

The Doctor watched her agitated movements, trying to distinguish limbs and angles through the puffy, twisting web of materials. He circled around next to her, but it wasn’t any clearer up close. 

After 54 seconds, Donna’s head poked out of the blankets, turned toward the door. She sighed, seeming to relax, and then suddenly jerked around to look at him like she’d never seen him before in her life. “Oh for Chrissake!” She bunched up like a pillbug snapping shut. “Doctor, I can’t deal with you right now! _Get out of my room!!_ ” 

He ignored that clearly delirious suggestion, putting the back of his hand on her forehead. “Your temperature is raised, but you don’t seem to be running any significant fever.” 

She jerked away, making a strangled sound. “I’ll explain later! I promise! But you absolutely have to get out of my room _right now_!” 

“You’ve experienced this before?” he asked, trying to get a look at her eyes. Her pupils were completely dilated, but seemed evenly responsive. 

She twisted, working one arm out from under the covers to shove him away. “Yes!” she hissed, “It’s totally normal. I’ll tell you all about it later. With pictures! But you have to go. And you absolutely have to stop touching me!” 

He prodded her neck with his fingers, testing for sensitivity, but she kept flinching away like everything was over-sensitized so it wasn’t actually narrowing anything down. “You can’t honestly expect me to just leave you alone with some unknown pathogen working its way through your system.” 

Donna did an impressive imitation of a pterodactyl being sucked into a jet engine. “You absolute pillock! The drinks we had earlier were _enhanced on purpose_. Thought I was going to have some fun with the local Casanova, didn't I?” She slapped his hands away emphatically. “But since you scared off my partner, I’m going to take care of it myself if you would just clear off for _five bleeding minutes!_ ” 

He frowned down at her. “You can do that? Why didn’t you just say that to begin with?” 

She shrieked in a register that quite honestly shouldn’t have been possible with her species’ vocal chords. " _Get out!!!!_ ”

* * *

Donna reemerged 1 hour, 47 minutes and 28 seconds later, wearing a voluminous jumper, but looking a bit less likely to bite his head off, which he considered promising. 

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, shoving her hands up her sleeves.

“You don’t need to look so uncomfortable. It’s perfectly natural. I forget that your era has a taboos around this…” he waved his hand in a vague pinwheel, “Sort of thing.”

Donna scoffed indignantly. “Oi, don’t treat me like some uptight Victorian just because I don’t want you pawing at me while I’m having a wank.” 

“Right, right, of course not!” He waved her off. As though Donna would survive more than a week in Victorian England. “But you do remember we're not the same species, don't you? If you saw two cats mating in a park you wouldn’t get offended. You’d just shrug it off because they’re cats!” 

“Probably wouldn’t run up and start petting them while they were going at it,” Donna grumbled, “But fine, I― Wait! _I’m_ not a cat! Is that what you think I am?! Some flipping _pet_?!?” 

“No no no,” he put his hands up, trying for a soothing gesture, “Don’t be ridiculous. You’d be a terrible choice for a pet. A pet should be much better behaved.” 

“What!!” Donna jumped up. “ _What did you just say to me?!_ ”

He leapt around the central column, careful to keep a barrier between them. “I’m saying you’re _not_ a pet! You’re obviously not a pet! _No one_ called you a pet!!!”

Donna, somewhat ironically, puffed out like an affronted cat. “You’d better be coming around to a point and it had better be flipping amazing and it had better get here _fast_!” 

“I’m _apologizing_!” he yelped. “ _That’s_ the point!” 

Donna glared, clearly still miffed about the cat comment, but she no longer looked like she was moments away from taking a swipe at him. 

He focused on holding very still and being as unthreatening as possible. 

“Fine,” she huffed, finally. “But I’m not your damn pet!” 

“I never _said_ you were my pet! You do understand the _concept_ of an analogy, don’t you?” 

“Oh shut up,” she huffed. “You’re useless. If anyone’s the pet, you’re the pet. How did I get saddled with such a weird pet?”

“No one’s a pet!” he said, louder. 

Donna cackled a bit, settling back into the jumpseat. “Should trade you in for a rabbit or something.” 

“No rabbit in its right mind would come near you,” he pointed out. “All your shrieking would trigger their prey instincts.”

“All my _what_?!” she shrieked.

“That reminds me― how does a nice forest sound right about now?” He was already punching in coordinates. 

“Fine,” she said. “But there had better not be bears.” 

“Course not,” he said, “Planet full of herbivores. You’ll love it.” 

He decided not to mention that without predators, the rabbit-like fauna had grown to the size of hatchbacks. 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m also on [tumblr](https://1-of-those-things.tumblr.com/).


End file.
